Orchid Games Blog

Hello! After several quiet months we're finally getting ready to launch a new project. The name is Royal Trouble. It'll be something fresh and quite different from our previous titles. You'll be hearing more about it in the next few days and right now let me show you a teaser - a very first screenshot, straight from the game :)

We have updated our Heartwild Solitaire and Heartwild Solitaire Classic games for both PC and Mac. This one should improve the stability on various computers and fix problems with Classic crashing, especially on Mac.

Additionally, thanks to a new auto-update system, in the future the game will upgrade itself automatically. But for now, just this last time, you need to redownload and reinstall it yourself. Here are links to both games:

• Download Heartwild Solitaire
• Download Heartwild Solitaire Classic

Valentine's Day Special: A romance themed game like Heartwild Solitaire could be the perfect gift for Valentine's Day. Do you know someone who would enjoy it? We have a special promotion now: gift coupons at HALF the price!

Good news for people working on Macs: extra levels for Heartwild Solitaire are now available for you. It took us some time to get it right because installing the extras on OS X is a bit tricky. But in the end it all worked out, so... enjoy :)

Oh, and remember that these extra levels work with the Author's Edition only (purchased from our site at www.orchidgames.com).

I have something special today -- it's a Christmas gift for you!

We've made a small bonus game titled Heartwild Solitaire Classic. It's based on classic solitaire rules (hence the name) and made with beautiful art and music you know from Heartwild Solitaire.

The unique twist is that we've invited seven romance authors to work on this product. They wrote heartwarming short stories that you will be unlocking as you progress through the game.

The game is 100% free and you can get it now, for both PC and Mac:
http://www.orchidgames.com/heartwild_solitaire_classic

I hope you will have fun with it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you! Have a great holiday, folks :)

Some of you might have already noticed the pack of 16 new levels ("Seasons") which we posted in our forums earlier. Now we have something even cooler: a completely new theme ("Sunny Memories") with art you haven't seen before. Plus another batch of 16 levels. You can grab both from Heartwild Solitaire extras page. Enjoy! :)

Yesterday we had some replumbing and repainting done on our website. There were two reasons for that. First was preparing it for our upcoming games. The old site was built for Heartwild Solitaire only. Now we need space for more :)

Second reason was to update our ordering and payment system. You will no longer have to download a separate full version after purchasing. From now on we'll just email you an activation code which will turn the demo you already have into a full version. And these codes work offline, so you don't have to be connected to the internet to use them. This system should be much simpler and faster to use.

We just updated the top scores chart for Heartwild Solitaire. The most important change is a fixed issue that prevented some of the recent scores from showing up. Apologies for that! If you've posted a top score and it wasn't visible before, please take a look again. If it's still not there -- do let us know.

The rest of improvements are visual:

• the list was expanded to hold top 100 scores
• recently posted scores are marked with "fresh!" tag, for easier spotting
• each entry now has a date saying when it was posted
• scores from the new, revised version are also marked separately

Hopefully these will make the chart more readable :)

We have just released an updated version of Heartwild Solitaire for Windows. What's new:

1. It runs faster and smoother, especially on older machines.
2. Scoring system is slightly different, you will probably be able to make a higher score in this version. Good news if you're the competitive type ;)
3. There's lots of other smaller improvements and more polished interface.

One drawback: after upgrade you will lose your current progress and you will have to play from the beginning. This isn't really a problem for most people, but please keep it on mind.

I highly recommend you to upgrade your game and I'm sure you will enjoy the new version more.

WHERE TO FIND THE NEW VERSION?

1. Make sure to sign in with your email and password first. If you don't remeber these, please use the password reminder or contact us.
2. Then go to ACCOUNT and YOUR GAMES, or just click this direct link: http://www.orchidgames.com/user/games

SHOULD YOU UNINSTALL THE OLD ONE FIRST?

Yes, please do that. And if you forget, the game will ask you to uninstall it anyway when setting up the new version.

I hope you'll keep having good time with Heartwild Solitaire. And please don't hesitate to email us if you have any questions, suggestions or just want to say hi. We love hearing back from you :)

Heartwild Solitaire is coming to Macs, finally. We just started testing a preview version and it looks very solid. This is the same game as on PCs so you'll be getting the full experience. Even better - from now on, since we have this cool new technology, we will be releasing all our games on both platforms simultaneously.

By the way, it's actually the first time we made a game for Macs so it was kind of funny feeling to see how well it fits in there :) And playing with OS X made me envy again. It's so well designed. Why Windows can't be that simple and clean? Eh...

Anyway, Mac downloads should be available soon (within few weeks). I'll keep you updated.